when driven by the vigorous strength of a whole people.

An era arises insidiously, and in its womb, hidden from the people, are the seeds of disaster and death to popular liberty. Its tendency must be grasped by a people, and its progress stopped, or it will become inherent and the epoch will burst its bounds and the Rubicon will have been passed dividing the people from its liberties. The tendencies of an epoch touching the State, guarded by written constitutional limitations, such as the relation of the citizen to the State, or the relation of the States to the General Government, can be watched. The infraction of this class of rights cannot be insidious. The written law is engraved alike on the brazen posts as well as on the hearts of the people, and the approach of danger can be seen by all men. The epoch or tendency to be dreaded, as containing the very seeds of death to the institutions of a free people, is the era carrying with it the hidden dangers involving the division of the people into classes, the changing of the relations of the people to themselves, the change of sentiment as to the ideas of government, and the corruption of the moral tissues and life of the people resulting therefrom. Here, Sir, is the era of danger to a free people, for it is insidious in its approach, and the rights impinged upon are not written.

Read the history of free government in all ages and in all lands, and from all comes the melancholy message that free government has always been destroyed from within and never from without. It is one broad,

marked, unvarying path-a young people filled with freedom, simple, economical, patriotic, the widening of its power, ships on the seas, luxury at home, and influence abroad, privileges for some, discontent for others, the rich and the poor, a Cleon haranguing the people and a Cæsar at the Capital. A tyro can write the simple story. It seems to me that this epoch of our civil life, when the people have largely passed the constructive and creative stages of the nation's existence, when the great fundamental questions of government have been settled, and the people are practically engaged upon these matters which shape for all time the texture and mold of the individual and class relation and existence, is the most important to us and to mankind.

The epoch of to-day into which the people are passing is the era of Commercialism. Its relation is most important to the question under discussion. Sir, with homage for its power, do I mention the spirit of American Commercialism impelled by the restless genius of this people. The Hanging Gardens would be but a plaything of a day for one of our merchant princes, and all the wealth of Rome garnered from Asia Minor and Gaul and Egypt and all of the tribute lands would not suffice to supply for one year the needs of the kings of American commerce. Never was there such power. It has surrounded this continent as a maiden by her girdle. It has pervaded every class. It has turned its eyes to the world, and has grasped in its strong hands

the whole universe. It has flung France aside from its path as a puny child. It has stridden past Germany, has throttled England, and stands to-day beside the only power, its comparative equal in future commercial rule, Imperial Russia. It is building bridges in Africa to bear the tramp of the British legions. Its rail to-night lies under the snows of Siberia, and behind its engines are heard the strange mutterings of the bearded Cossack and fierce Ukranian. It is clothing the Celestial in cotton, and it is cutting the bearded wheat in Argentina. Strange tongues are whispering over its cables strung under strange seas. It is selling knives in Sheffield and cloth in France, and is lending money to London. It builds warships for the Czar and sewing-machines for Japan. It digs coal under the winds of Magellan, and gold and diamonds in Africa. Its ships gather commerce from every port, and it buys and sells in every land. It waits not on steam and sail, but shakes the continent in its impatient hands that the waters of the Orient and Occident may flow together to do its bidding. It is omnipresent and almost omnipotent. Was there ever such power? It tosses millions as the boy flips the marble at his play, and its colossal combinations of wealth touch with their golden fingers every useful thing. This unprecedented growth of commercial life, necessarily expressing itself through corporate existence, the growth of interstate commerce, the building and operation of the railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone, and the various won

derful and far-reaching combinations, demanding immediate results to be effective, necessarily restive at all interference, all being the expression of the commercialism of the day, affecting every condition of individual, social, national, and commercial life, demands, as never before, the preservation of that essence of our national life and being, the spirit of American democracy, in all of its mighty strength and unshorn of any of its power.

Now, sir, do not understand me in the slightest degree to underestimate the power for good possessed by wealth. I make my obeisance to the great desire on the part of wealth to send light where there is darkness, to touch the sick and the helpless with soothing care, and to erect on the broadest foundation its monument to learning and the arts. This is a commercial nation, and the desire and power to acquire and use wealth within its legitimate bounds is to be honored by every good citizen. What, then, are the dangers of commercialism? What are its tendencies? Can these tendencies, if dangerous to the Republic, be eliminated by the reimposition of a restrictive franchise? The danger to the Republic from this era is that the legitimate spirit of commercialism will become political commercialism. It is rapidly so becoming. I submit, sir, that this epoch of political commercialism, if unchecked in its tendencies, will destroy the true ideal of the Republic. In our natural haste to grasp and utilize the marvellous material conditions vouch

safed to us by a new continent, we are losing sight of the republican principles inculcating those high and noble virtues which attended the birth of the Republic and which should live as its very texture. The love of the welfare of the whole people, the wealth of patriotism, that pride of high character of those in high places, that jealous desire for an exalted ideal for the nation, that thorough knowledge of the aims of the government looking not alone to self-utilization, seem to me to be lessening under the fierce assault of those conditions which allow the citizen to such a vast extent to better his material welfare. It will surely beget a lower standard of civil life and desire. It is weakening the true spirit of democracy. Under the spirit as well as the letter of our institutions we can have no patent of nobility, but have we not established a class with success in accumulation as its real patent of nobility? Are we not making the standard of our ideal of citizenship, that of breadth of acres and numbers of stocks and wealth of possessions, rather than that of statesmanship, profound learning, exalted patriotism, and unselfish citizenship? Would not the people to-day prefer Themistocles rather than listen to Aristides; and with the dominance of this spirit, so variant from the true idea of democracy, would not Jove soon fill the other urn with disastrous fulness. The real spirit of democracy has been tumbling empires, and overthrowing kingdoms, and lifting the peoples of the world to a better and higher condition of life. Would not a change